Church plan splitting Pullman

Two sides battle over a proposal for a massive church-sports complex in the historic area, and race becomes an issue

August 10, 2003|By David Mendell, Tribune staff reporter.

Residents of South Pullman's quaint red-brick rowhouses on the Far South Side have never been the kind to welcome intrusions from the outside world. They are so protective of their historic neighborhood that in the 1980s they fiercely fought the construction of a McDonald's.

But soon, those residents might have a new neighbor, a mega-church as big as a stadium that some say will disrupt the community.

Rev. James Meeks, a preacher blessed with a telegenic mix of fiery charisma and personal charm, wants to build the worship center/sports arena on 22 acres of long-vacant land on the edge of Pullman, one of the country's first company towns. His ambitious $42 million project has sharply divided the community.

Fueling the controversy is perhaps the most sensitive issue in American society: race.

Advocates for the project, including Meeks, accuse some opponents not only of being demagogues trying to run the Pullman neighborhood without popular consent, but also of being driven by fear that the only enclave of whites for miles will be overrun by Meeks' huge congregation of nearly 17,000 blacks.

"It's strange--it's like the opposite of white flight in the 1970s, where whites wanted to leave voluntarily," said Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), whose ward includes Pullman and who is a member of Meeks' Salem Baptist Church. "It's really a story of white people trying to hold on to what they've got."

Church opponents maintain they only fear traffic and congestion generated from the massive facility, not blacks. In fact, a few blacks in Pullman also oppose the church.

"We are not racists," maintained Arthur Pearson, a leader of the opposition. "The traffic and pollution and noise will paralyze this community."

This much is certain: Pullman activists of various skin colors have invoked race to further their agenda--both for and against Meeks' worship center. Thus, the modern-day story of Pullman and its confrontation with Meeks is the story of how racial fears prevent this racially mixed community from becoming one of the city's most showcased neighborhoods.

Indeed, Pullman is considered by some historians to be Chicago's most historically significant neighborhood. Railcar entrepreneur George Pullman founded the community in the 1880s, largely with newly emancipated African-Americans. The work of Pullman labor leader A. Philip Randolph foreshadowed the U.S. labor and civil rights' movements by decades.

So it is with no small amount of irony that Pullman has found itself in combat with one of the city's most influential and powerful black leaders. Meeks' political power is growing rapidly. The Calumet City resident was elected to the Illinois Senate last year and has been named by Rev. Jesse Jackson as the heir apparent to Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.

The race question

South Pullman, ethnically and racially, is perhaps the city's most evenly divided neighborhood. Of its nearly 2,000 residents in 2000, 36 percent were white, 36 percent were Hispanic and 25 percent were black, according to census data. Yet the number of whites is on the decline. From 1990 to 2000, the white population in South Pullman fell from more than 1,200 to about 700.

South Pullman was virtually the only neighborhood for miles that didn't succumb to white flight decades ago. The extremely tight-knit, working-class ethnic Europeans in South Pullman weren't about to be run off from their beloved rowhouses.

"For all their different perspectives, the people in Pullman really care about each other and would be willing to fight for the community like no other place in Chicago," said Tim Samuelson, an architectural historian for the city who lived in the neighborhood from 1977 to 1995.

"If the communists had ever arrived and marched on Pullman, these people would have been ready for them," he said. "Everyone pulled together in the most amazing way, and certainly if you lived there, it was one of the warmest neighborhood experiences you could ever imagine."

Race a nagging issue

Yet race has been a constant nagging issue in the area. Although whites make up only a third of the population in the neighborhood, blacks in surrounding neighborhoods perceive South Pullman to be nearly all white. With longer histories in the community, whites generally run the civic organization and historic foundation. And neighborhood meetings in South Pullman consist of overwhelmingly white crowds.

That perception plays a major role in the church conflict.

In November 2000, at a town meeting to discuss the proposal, whites hammered Meeks and Beale: How many parking spaces would be available? Is this proposal set in stone or can a different site be found? Why does the church need to be so big?

But after much discussion, finally the unspoken was spoken. A white, elderly woman stood up and peered condescendingly at the questioners.